In an invited critique, Dr. Mary T. Hawn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham notes that mesh fixation methods have been implicated as a potential cause of chronic groin pain following hernia repair.

(Birmingham Business Journal)Andreas Rauterkus, assistant professor of finance at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Business said the weakened dollar will present another potential challenge for the economy in 2011.

(Birmingham Business Journal)Every newly inaugurated governor since the CON's inception in 1979 has called for a moratorium with the exception of Bob Riley in 2003. Will Ferniany, CEO of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System, said the decision doesn't hamstring or negatively affect UAB Health System's goals for 2011.

(Science Codex)Researchers at UMass Medical School, working with colleagues at Cooper Green Mercy Hospital and the University of Alabama at Birmingham have identified one promising approach. They identified "exceptionally eloquent and persuasive" patients with hypertension from focus groups where blood pressure control and the benefits of intervention were discussed; these volunteers were then videotaped, and edited DVDs, distilled from 80 hours of taping, were created.

(News-Medical.net)InQ Biosciences, a provider of innovative technologies for cell growth and research, today announced that a pre-commercial version of its InQ Cell Research System is being utilized in a University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study evaluating the effects of secondary injury components on brain cells.

(Scientific American)A group of researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham raised one group of mouse pups as if it were winter, giving them eight hours of sunlight a day, and a second group as if it were summer, with 16 hours of sunlight a day.

(Huntsville Times)A Huntsville philanthropist has given $500,000 to fund research into Parkinson disease done jointly by Huntsville's HudsonAlpha Institute of Biotechnology and the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

(Birmingham Business Journal)David Hilton, an assistant professor of physics in University of Alabama at Birmingham's College of Arts and Sciences, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

(CNN.com)"They were very grateful for the treatment," says the lead researcher, Patricia Goode, M.D., medical director of the continence clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Aging. "It was sort of empowering for them. ... They were very glad to find a therapy that they could do themselves."

(New York Times)"It's responsible for 90 percent of the morbidity and mortality, but gets less than 5 percent of the budget," said Dr. Welch, a senior scientist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who studies genes that suppress metastasis.

(Birmingham News)Roberts, an ophthalmologist who graduated from Bir­mingham-Southern College and UAB Medical School, moved his wife and three sons to Kenya with him in 2006. "I felt that's where the Lord was leading us," Rob­erts said. "There's a great need there."